Author
Topic: Roquefort style cheese (Read 714 times)

After the success of my last blue I was keen to get some more on the go.My last blue was based on the stilton recipe in caldwells book. I think I'm coming to realise that I prefer a roquefort to a stilton so my current blue is loosely based on her roquefort recipe. I say loosely, as I don't have access to sheeps milk, so have had to use the same jersey cow milk as with my stilton. However from a process point of view I have followed the roquefort recipe.

The cheese has been in the cave for about 4 weeks now, flipped (almost) every day.Now I've got to a part of the process where I'm not entirely sure what to do.At this stage the recipe in the book says that I continue as I currently am until there is sufficient blueing throughout the cheese, before wrapping in foil.However, theres no indication of whether it should take weeks or months until theres enough blueing. I guess this could be subjective and down to personal preferrence? I was at the Roquefort cheese caves a couple of years back, but cant remember how long they waited before foiling.Due to the size of the cheeses I'm reluctant to start taking samples to see how blue the interior is. The outside seem to have a decent level of blue on them. I'm thinking that when they are wrapped in foil there won't be sufficent oxygen required for blue growth. I could err on the side of caution and leave them a bit longer, however as roquefort is dubbed as a rindless cheese, I would have thought I wouldnt want to leave them too long? My last blue ended up with quite a funky and well defined rind.

Any thoughts on how long a roquefort should be in the cave prior to foiling??

Depends on size of cheese and strain of PR used. some are fast and some are slow growing.for a 1-2 kg wheel I would wrap after 6-8 weeks and continue to age till around 4-5 months so you get futher aroma and texture development.

Logged

Amatuar winemaker,baker, cook and musician not in any particular order.

I have tried to do a Roquefort type cheese, since I have sheep milk, but the recipes I have been able to get have conflicting information, not like the stillton recipe that is widely available. in one of my first makes I wrapped in aluminum foil and after some weeks it stuck to the cheese and kind of melted into it, like if the acidity of the curds interacted chemically witch must be a really bad thing. I understand that in France they use thin foil and not aluminum. so if you can't find thin use vac-packthat said I have had better luck flavor wise letting it develop a crust as in my cave everything gets covered in wild B-linens, so in my case the rindless look is very hard to getI think that more important is to age at a colder temperature 38-39F after the initial bluing to develop a creamy texture,

I ended up vacuum packing in the end, rather than risking the foil. I'll have to research the correct type of foil. I think in the end the Cheese was about 8 weeks old before I vac-ed it, then had another month before being eaten. I know it should probably have left it longer.... but it tasted so good!

The cheese turned out amazingly and all got eaten over Christmas.

It started turning slightly orange, and the rind was a bit damp when I took it out of the plastic, so not sure if it had picked up a bit of b-linens, or if it just didnt like being vacuumed. Didn't really impact the flavour though.

This batch was divided into two smallish cheeses due to not having a large mold

Went great with homemade baguettes!

Nom Nom Nom!!

I've started on my next cheese at the weekend. I've used the gorgonzola recipe from Caldwells book, so am excited to see how that goes.Am tempted to get started on something that needs to age for a long time, like a gruyere/comte. Yum!